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LIFE • TRAVEL • RESTAURANT REVIEWS • FILM & THEATRE • ART • MUSIC • BOOK REVIEW

Society& Culture

BOOK REVIEWThis book grows from being a biography of one visionary leader to a lesson of passionate leadership. CONTENTS ! Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid 75 ! Service that is not seamless 76

It was dismissed as down market, but Kenya’s fi lm industry is stealing the show in the region

Ripples of Riverwood

LOCAL INDUSTRY

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Despite their mediocre equipment, poor visual quality and small budgets, it has come to represent a commercial aspect of the Kenyan fi lm industry, which the mainstream sector has been unable to replicate.

“Kenyan fi lm is not an industry yet, according to me,” said Mr Asiba. “If it was then people could live on making fi lm, the fi lm makers would be able to make money to pay their bills, but that is not the case which is why most fi lm makers are doing other jobs. So you split yourself between the fi lm and other jobs and are not giving maximum concentration to the fi lm.” He continued, “But the Riverwood model is working, and the same model is working in Tanzania where we have the Vibanda industry.”

Riverwood is based on a hard-nosed busi-ness model that is commerce oriented with profi t as the overriding motive. The script writer is hard pressed to deliver a storyline which will gain audience popularity. This is why 90% of its productions are comedies that Kenyan communities readily accept as their own, says 3rd Force, a private grouping of fi lm producers and audiovisual practi-tioners that aims to develop an authentic indigenous fi lm industry in Kenya.

Stephanie Dresch, a fi lm afi cionado who has studied the development of the East AFri-can fi lm industry over the last ten years said of Riverwood that it is more a business than an artistic venture as compared to festival fi lms, simply because Riverwood fi lms have to be fi nished and sold quickly in order to make money before pirated copies conquer the market.

To generate as great a profi t margin as possible, costs are held at the bare minimum facilitated by cheap equipment and low wages to technical and creative personnel. Equipment requirements are basic: a low end digital camera, an amateur non-linear editing system, and a PC with minimum specifi cations. 3rd Force estimates total production and post production charges at between Sh25,000 and Sh50,000. Wage bills are low because of high levels of unemploy-ment among youth, and so actors are paid between Sh2000 to Sh5000 for a 3 day shoot

BY AAMERA JIWAJI

I nitially criticised for shoddy productions and piracy, Riverwood is now considered a key economic pillar in the country,

characterised by its lively spirit and entrepre-neurial qualities.

The informal fi lm industry which takes it name from River Road, the busy street in downtown Nairobi where music tapes and electronics are sold, has developed a reputation for producing movies and music quickly with one production being prepared in between a week to a fortnight depending on the popularity of the star artist and the creativity of the product. It is fast capturing the attention of mainstream TV stations and pan-African broadcasters, and building stars like Machang’i, Kihenjo and Githingithia who have been ignored by mainstream media but are turning into underground celebrities.

“What qualifi es as a fi lm industry in Kenya is what we have in the Riverwood concept,” said Charles Asiba, CEO and Festival Director of the Kenya International Film Festival. “People are making fi lms. It doesn’t matter what quality of fi lms they are making, they

are able to make money out of the fi lms they are making, and they have established a well niched communication and distribution network where someone makes a fi lm today and in a month’s time they have recovered the cost of making the fi lm and have made some profi ts.”

Over the last fi ve years, Riverwood’s low cost amateur non linear editing solutions have enabled entrepreneurial Kenyans to release fi lms on video compact disc. River-wood productions fi t within the light enter-tainment genre and are screened in cafes, pubs and public transport vehicles across the country, and are produced in vernacu-lar languages including Kikuyu, Kikamba, Dholuo, Kisii or in Kiswahili / Sheng.

What qualifi es as a fi lm industry in Kenya is what we have in the

Riverwood concept

“The Riverwood model is working, and the same model is working in Tanzania where we have the Vibanda industry.”

Charles Asiba, CEO and Festival

Director of the Kenya

International Film Festival.

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(each fi lm has a maximum of 6 actors).Cost cutting measures are also applied

when selecting fi lming locations. It exploits the benefi ts of vicinity in selecting locations, o! ers free popularization of a commercial venue and ropes in residential premises from the producer, his friends and relatives.

Mass production of the VCD takes place using amateur copiers, blank discs which cost Sh10 each and low cost printing of covers. And a network of established distributors sells these audio visual materi-als from downtown Nairobi to all corners of the country.

Riverwood VCDs retail for Sh200; most fi lms sell between 1000 and 4000 copies earning around Sh800,000 in sales. Costs of production are easily met, and assuming 1,000 productions a year this translates to minimum annual earnings of Sh800 million.

“Visit River Road one of these fi ne days and have a look at how thousands of local fi lmmakers are earning decent fi gures from

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perceptions. “The cultural economy is viewed in terms

of museums and archives but we need to move away from the concept of cultural economy to creative economy. Creative busi-ness brings in intellectual property rights, advertising, and fi lm and ties in a certain dynamism that is not ethnographic or what has been brought from the past,” he said.

3rd Force recommends piggy back-ing on the 20,000 video halls that exist in unplanned urban settlements across the country to popularise Riverwood, which would prompt a ripple e! ect as television stations would begin applying for rights to broadcast these productions.

It says, “The majority of the Kenyan consumers do not have the middle class tastes for foreign programs but are yearn-ing to see themselves on the screen in their everyday life. These are viable economic players as the innovators of the “kadogo” pack consumer products have discovered

their fi lms. The quality of the fi lms may not be excellent, but the stories are interesting. What is the point of going into production if you cannot live o! it?” posed Mr Asiba.

Riverwood employs thousands of people, directly and indirectly. The entire industry, confi ned to the length of River road in Nairo-bi city, consists of musicians, comedians, fi lmmakers, actors, video editors, camera operators and distribution merchants.

The Kenya Film Commission (KFC) estimates that the industry has the ability to create 250,000 jobs and boost economic growth since Riverwood is 100% SME through sole proprietorships or partner-ships.

Industry experts urge the government to invest in training and research in the fi lm industry, emphasizing the potential the industry holds for employment and its abil-ity to express cultural identities. Linguistics scholar at Strathmore University Prof Kimani Njogu even calls for a rethink of prevailing

“Visit River Road one of these fi ne days and have a look at how thousands of local fi lmmakers are earning decent fi gures from their fi lms. The quality of the fi lms may not be excellent, but the stories are interesting. What is the point of going into production if you cannot live o! it?” said Mr Asiba.

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BOOK REVIEW

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid has received

praises from people like Bill Gates and Madeleine K. Albright for its unique view of wealth creation. It was voted the Best Book in 2004 by Amazon Editors, by Fast Com-pany Magazine and as Top 25 Book by Economist Magazine. Authored by bestselling author Competing for the Future, Professor of Busi-ness administration and Strategy at the University of Michigan, this book provides an amazing way of looking at poverty and wealth creation among the world’s poor-est communities.

It delves into the ‘the world’s most exciting, fastest growing new market’ and gives tools, insights for developing innovative products and business models for this market. This is the market that McKinsey consultants are publishing Winning the $30 tril-lion decathlon for to encourage its clients to look at emerging economies. It establishes that over 4billion people earn below $2 /day and can be treated as joint problem solvers and entre-preneurs.

This book recognizes Bottom of the Pyramid as a market, o! ers a way of creating products and services for this market, and pro-vides ideas for scaling the local solution to be global opportunity.

Poverty like many problems ac-cording to Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid becomes an op-portunity to create wealth.

The poor become co-entrepre-neurs, partners with aid agencies, government and private sector. When seen di! erently this book documents how women bring wealth to their communities whether it is from the Grameen phone ladies to village women entrepreneurs , such as Shakti Amma of HLL India, the 10, 000 self help groups of ICICI bank, the women taking milk to the Amul to stories in US of Avon, Mary Kay and Tupperware.

The researchers collected over 100 hours of video interviews (available at whartonsp.com).They are written in a simple language such that it is immedi-ately usable with practical tools for entrepreneurs, mangers and social change agents.

Its approach faces the usual criticism that it is based on suc-cess stories prone to selective bias and lack research rigour. Nonetheless it is exciting to read, eye opening and insightful for anyone looking to innovate in Kenya, and Africa at Large. Mr. Kipchumba is a Consultant with Quest Works and adjunct faculty at Strathmore’s Executive Education

Author: C.K. PrahaladReviewed by: Tim Kipchumba

Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid

in micro packaging their products to fi t the purchasing power of the ordinary Kenyans. From airtime to basic foodstu! s, Kenya’s economy is run by the majority of working labourers, jua kali artisans, farmers and small traders who are also driving River-wood, and not the middle class with its foreign oriented consumer culture.”

At the 2008 Kenya International FIlm festival, Riverwood was discussed at length, and Ken, a fi lm produced by Riverwood fi lm-makers in collaboration with a South AFrican company, was screened. These activities succeeded the launch of a Kenya Film Works initiative which combined the making of local content fi lms and on the job training for fi lm makers.

“This not only allows us to impart skills but also to learn from their skills whilst creating a bottom up business model which allows for growth without imposing strict rules on a business that thrives on the give and take of its own environment,” the KIFF report reads.

This year KIFF, which is in its 7th edition, held capacity building workshops for new and existing fi lm makers on scripting, scor-ing of music and how to use cameras, with the aim of building a mentorship culture that will enable young and budding fi lm makers to learn about the art from experienced practitioners. The recognition of Riverwood at a mainstream festival speaks of how its productions are now being seen as Kenyan fi lm.

“What is now being seen as Kenyan fi lm is what is happening on River Road. A lot of it is actually graduating into better qual-ity because they are looking at it in terms of production and distribution,” explained Mr Asiba. Like any other business, many fi lm makers who started in Riverwood are graduating to making soap operas for televi-sion stations, but in an e! ort to enhance the industry, KIFF recently took a group of Riverwood producers to Nigeria to learn from the Nollywood fi lm industry.

The distribution of Riverwood productions also received a boost recently when a movie streaming platform targeting its fi lms was launched in June. The project will enhance revenue streams for producers and will grow further when Riverfl ix launches its mobile platform in coming months.